Two: whenever I get frustrated about the slowness of my body's development in terms of fitness, esp. when I fall off the exercise train and then, stumbling and cranky, by a ticket to get back on said train only to get kicked in the face by someone, I think of two things. One: the Newbie Chronicles, http://www.runnersworld.com/subtopic/0,7123,s6-380-383-492-0,00.html, where a new runner chronicles his his progress. Now, unfortunately, the first one isn't still up, but most of them are. it's really nice to see his gratingly slow, but eventual, honest progress. He's not one of those superrunners they're always interviewing, and I find his honesty incredibly comforting.
The other item is I like to think back on my tree-climbing days. I don't know why, but I was so incredibly determined to climb our trees. I tried a million ways. I tried scooting up, and jumping, and using a stool. Finally I learned how to use a rope for the first hop, anchoring myself. Eventually I managed to do it without anything. But it took me trying every day for two years. I mean, seriously, that was me, almost every day, going in the backyard for daily tree climbing. And suddenly one day I looked down and I was like, holy crud, I have MUSCLES. And I had the strongest upper body of all the kids in class, and when I got in gymnastics, even though I got made fun of for not knowing everything (they'd all been in class since 2), no one rivaled my body strength.
Then, alas, we moved, and pecans are a bitch to climb, so I stopped and lost my upper body strenght. Eh. Life. ;)
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branchandroot
Re: Here via a random content search, hoping that's okay
Date: 2010-12-11 03:36 pm (UTC)Two: whenever I get frustrated about the slowness of my body's development in terms of fitness, esp. when I fall off the exercise train and then, stumbling and cranky, by a ticket to get back on said train only to get kicked in the face by someone, I think of two things. One: the Newbie Chronicles, http://www.runnersworld.com/subtopic/0,7123,s6-380-383-492-0,00.html, where a new runner chronicles his his progress. Now, unfortunately, the first one isn't still up, but most of them are. it's really nice to see his gratingly slow, but eventual, honest progress. He's not one of those superrunners they're always interviewing, and I find his honesty incredibly comforting.
The other item is I like to think back on my tree-climbing days. I don't know why, but I was so incredibly determined to climb our trees. I tried a million ways. I tried scooting up, and jumping, and using a stool. Finally I learned how to use a rope for the first hop, anchoring myself. Eventually I managed to do it without anything. But it took me trying every day for two years. I mean, seriously, that was me, almost every day, going in the backyard for daily tree climbing. And suddenly one day I looked down and I was like, holy crud, I have MUSCLES. And I had the strongest upper body of all the kids in class, and when I got in gymnastics, even though I got made fun of for not knowing everything (they'd all been in class since 2), no one rivaled my body strength.
Then, alas, we moved, and pecans are a bitch to climb, so I stopped and lost my upper body strenght. Eh. Life. ;)
-Val